Thursday, 26 March 2015

Washington's opposition to a new China-led development bank is "embarrassing" and "idiotic", a former top Goldman Sachs executive said on Thursday, as an increasing number of US allies embrace the institution.

Seven decades after the end of World War II, the international economic architecture crafted by the US faces its biggest shakeup yet, with China establishing new channels for influence to match its ambitions.

'What was he thinking?' is the kind of rhetorical question we would direct at, for example, the lazy high-school student who ended up plagiarising the historical narrative posted on the website of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and submitted it as a class paper on race relations in America. It was a silly idea that didn't make a lot of sense, and it wasn't going to work.

As Asians imagine a world without Lee Kuan Yew, I can’t help wondering what that diplomatic giant, with strong opinions on many things, would have made of the US’s lead-booted diplomacy over China’s new infrastructure bank?